Success Story from Rural Tanzania: Reduced Stunting Prevalence by 57% with Reaching Children’s Potential Program

In April 2017, volunteers and staff went around the village of Ipalamwa to enrol families with a woman of childbearing age or children under two years of age. The team of Global Volunteers presented the community with a child-focused, parent-driven, community-led, and volunteer-supported approach to reduce the prevalence of childhood stunting in rural areas. This effort began the Reaching Children’s Potential (RCP) Program in Tanzania, a comprehensive approach to eradicate hunger, improve health, and enhance cognition based on the United Nations Essential Package and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Escalating stunting across the world 

The challenge of childhood stunting is well known among the development community. In 2021, the United Nations reported that 22% of children under five were stunted worldwide. While numbers were declining globally, the prevalence in Africa has stagnated or increased. The 2022 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey reported that 30% of children under five nationally and 56.9% in the Iringa Region specifically were stunted, a number higher than previous years’ reports.    

Building Blocks of the RCP Program 

The RCP program begins with conception, continues through the 18th birthday, and targets the first 1,000 days of life, the critical window for preventing stunting and the accompanying lifetime impacts on physical, cognitive, and economic outcomes. The program began with 50 families and grew by mid-2023 to over 800 in the five villages of the Ukwega Ward, Iringa Region, with a participation rate among eligible families of over 90%.   

Prioritizing the role of mothers and families, staff and short-term volunteers: 

1. Deliver parent educational workshops on family health, nutrition, hygiene, and child development topics. 

2. Conduct home visits to reinforce the lessons learned during the workshops and offer psychosocial support. 

3. Provide access to free primary and maternal medical care through a newly constructed state-of-the-art health clinic. 

4. Render nutritional support through nutrient-fortified meals, household container garden boxes, and chicken coops. 

Other supplemental components include: 

• Home hand-washing stations. 
• Women’s cooperatives. 
• Mental wellness education. 
• School feeding. 
• Enhanced instruction in primary and secondary schools. 

Program efficacy as told by data 

Since the program’s beginning, Global Volunteers has collected and analyzed data to determine its efficacy. Height, weight, and head circumference measurements have been taken monthly for all enrolled children, along with baseline and follow-up demographic surveys. Over the same period, children without access to the RCP program in the nearby village of Kisinga were measured and followed. The results have been staggering.

As of early 2023, when the latest Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey results were released, the prevalence of stunting among children under five enrolled in RCP is 13.4% – less than a quarter of the 56.9% average for the region. A similar analysis found that children in the RCP Program are 61% less likely to become stunted than those in Kisinga. Further, children stunted at baseline were 98% less likely to be checked 18 months later if enrolled in the RCP program.

Evidence of Interconnected Child Development 

Stunting prevalence is not the only factor impacted. Demographic and health surveys completed by Global Volunteers at enrollment and again at follow-up 18 months later showed a 22% decrease in the use of the river for drinking water as access to improved water sources increased. 82.1% of mothers reported exclusively breastfeeding their babies for six months or longer after their enrollment in RCP, compared with only 40.7% of mothers before registration.   

At baseline, 54.7% of children had diarrhoea, and 36.2% had a fever at least every 2-3 months, versus 15.6% and 11.5%, respectively, at follow-up. Regarding access to healthcare, the number of families who reported they could always visit a medical facility when needed and found the quality of their healthcare was consistently high more than doubled at follow-up. 

These markers of health, nutrition, and quality of life are expected to continue to improve as Global Volunteers provides families with a path towards: 

• Improving the health and well-being of their children. 
• Achieving self-sufficiency. 
• Breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. 

Currently, the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Center (TFNC), a division of the Ministry of Health, is finishing an external impact evaluation to independently measure the RCP program’s effect on children’s health in the Ukwega Ward.  

Stories from the mothers 

Feedback from RCP families also paints a promising picture. Sesiana and Tidali enrolled soon after the launch of the RCP Program when their second child was just eight months old. Their third child was born two years later. “Life has never been the same since the RCP Program,” Sesiana says. “How we raised our last two children differs greatly from how we raised the first one. Our firstborn was very weak when he was a baby, unlike Livaeli and Faith, who grew up with the RCP Program. It’s been very easy and smooth to raise the last two with the instructions given at the RCP Center.”

Similarly, RCP mother Fatness shared, “There is a huge difference between my older children, who I had before RCP, and my son, Baraka, who I delivered once I was in the program. The program helped me have a safe delivery, and Baraka’s cognition developed earlier than his older siblings did.” To these parents and their children, the impact is personal and can alter the course of their family’s lives.  

Hope for the future. 

Evidence shows RCP’s goal to eliminate childhood stunting is viable. This program represents a beacon of hope when other efforts worldwide struggle to reduce the prevalence of children stunted significantly. The RCP Program is poised to be replicated and scaled throughout Tanzania, across Africa, and around the globe.